Management Xq
During this fortnight time, adaptable for reflection. A cross platform criticism for those holding executive political offices, came to mind. It's not restricted to the current President, but to anyone holding that office or a similar one: governor, mayors and so forth. One thing thats gets George Bush into trouble, places him at dead ends
Dan Froomkin - Bubble Trouble - washingtonpost.com, and masks a way forward is the CEO metaphor. Which during his first term and the campaign for the second term he and people wishing to explain him talked about a great deal. The fault is not the conceit itself rather it is carrying, pushing the CEO notion too far. The idea that he is the chief executive of the nation the way one might be a chief executive of a corporation. Which in the past he reminds us he was. For this analogy he is the pinnacle of all authority in a closed system
President Who Sees in Absolutes Awaits Voters' Definitive Answer - washingtonpost.com. There are no other institutions or repositories of mores, of credible information. There is no Sarbanes-Oxley, there is no Taft-Hartely. The nation is hierarchally organized through the republican party, those in the organization owe the leader absolute loyalty and obedience. It is public power he has, not because he got it from us, but because he faces us individually with private power and creates a public of coequals (among us) as he does so. An examination of the analogy is in order. First he didn't hire us, he can't fire us. He often seems bothered or needful of our fealty regardless of competence or production of positive result. Moreover are we co-owners or W's employees? Are we Stockholders or shareholders? That is to say I can think of three general models here of how he might think he relates to us, each different: Privately held joint ownership, publicly traded stock, or employee shareholding ownership. The last is closest to what is and generally the one everyone seeks to avoid. The way he manages ,the way he leads, is a cascade of closed styles. Closed information style. Closed decision making style. Full of nebulous big picture thinking. Grand visions, attempted comprehensive solutions, thrown out to the wolves of unintended consequence. It is the opposite of the conscious style of small and incremental steps producing results capable of analyzed and confirmed of causal relation. This might seem cautious and not worthy of a far thinking transforming political leader. But I would argue it is the truly bold approach because it will lead to verifiable result. It will produce change. Pressed forward, profound change. Rhetorical gestures don't. They are merely campaigns taken up and abandoned. You don't get much in the way of explanation when this happens either. His is a relentlessly unaccountable decision making style. And it is a divisive style His sloganeering Uniter not Divider is a perverse irony, which has long been noted. Usually with some puzzlement. He looks out those who acknowledge they work for him. For the rest it is as though he has fired us out of the nation. Out of our rights our security, our citizenship. His rhetoric tirelessly and forcefully works to negate our sense of belonging. The key to his perspective is that if you are not on his team, and a team player. He feels no responsibility towards you and is not your president
Eugene Robinson - Now the Decider Must Listen - washingtonpost.com. No where was this clearer than with his grandest policy move, the Iraq war. At the risk of repetition what this war is about is the economy... The US Economy = Oil. It fuels our technological way of living, and we do what we do well. But not alternate sources, alternate usage of energy. That would be experimental, an unknown unknown. Our activity in Middle East equals an attempt at direct mercantilistic control of raw resources (someone in the Washington Post wrote column on this noting that the
Chinese are replicating our own "embrace the supply" strategy for their
own needs in Africa, I've misplaced the link for that). An attempt to capture control of oil not just for the sake of US industry in general, but the US petroleum industry in particular; as several other nations have industries capable of managing large oil-fields. This is opposed to a market approach where you would trust a market to sell you the oil if you had the wherewithal to pay for it . That ain't gonna happen. We have set out to meet the supply side, physically. This war was about moving a garrison out Saudi Arabia where it had been since the last gulf war, but where its presence was becoming increasingly problematic, and invading and overthrowing a seated government to move it to Iraq (where coincidentally there are many more oil fields). Does this set of moves equal transforming the middle east? No, it doesn't really. The full debate on this was not held; to forestall examination of its suppositions and underpinnings. It will now have to be held and decided on its merits. There will be no settling or getting out of the situation in Iraq without this Sebastian Mallaby - And Now, Back to The War - washingtonpost.com . Does the west (the US) have to act as guaranteer of Middle east stability for the sake of oil-burning first world economies? Will a garrison accomplish this, or will it always be seen as neo-colonistic and resisted, fueling opportunistic reactionary movements such as al Qaida? To the extent we grant ourselves complete freedom of action is sovereignty in abeyance as long as any dominant nation can make vague reference to its needs? Over the last thirty years a mission to use a rapid deployment force to seize the oil fields in the event some agency tried to shut production down, to cause a crash of western economies existed and been acquiesced to by both major parties. Has it been decided such a force must now necessarily be deployed in Iraq. For the remaining duration of the fossil fuel era? This may sound presumptuous but it seems to me that in fact such a consensus may exist, but no one wants to own up to it. Similarly has a decision been made to project US military forces in a light, mobile casting permanently to the worlds frontiers? To fight al Qaida (and other new world order resistance movements) collaterally with these forces. The time I suppose would be now, before everyone decides they need to have a nuclear weapon arsenal. Seeing that the front-line of the GWOT seems to be Britain, should we garrison Birmingham? I would, but then I'm from Massachusetts.
It did not help or even truly decided things to act as if only George Bush's, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld's opinion mattered. The last six years accomplished nothing. We can only hope (Bush Shows He Can Turn on a Dime - washingtonpost.com) we've got his attention now.
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